Reaching Those on the Move

Health information for the uprooted or displaced

Last month I was privileged to visit the Phillips Collection, the new Smithsonian National Museum of African American History and Culture (NMAAHC), and the White House. (I know, quite a month!) Each place was inspiring, but I found an unexpected thread linking them: the concept of migration.

At the Phillips, I viewed all 60 panels of Jacob Lawrence’s The Migration Series, reunited for a special exhibition. (The Phillips owns all the odd numbered panels in the series, the Museum of Modern Art in New York the even ones.) These colorful block images depict the migration of African Americans from the rural South to the industrial North, showing men and women in the fields, families at train stations, workers in steel mills, and a changing home life.

Later, at the NMAAHC, I traversed 500 years of African American history and culture, from the enslaved Africans to the first African American president. Then just before Christmas I toured the current home of that president. In the Green Room of the White House, I saw another Jacob Lawrence painting, “The Builders.” At the end of the migration, a chance to build a new life! “The Builders.” This painting of a group of men constructing a building was done by Jacob Lawrence in 1947. It hangs in the Green Room of the White House. (The White House Historical Association)

Those art pieces and museum exhibits inspired me to think about an important way NLM serves the health information needs of the public: how we reach people on the move.

We need to provide health information—often specific and potentially unfamiliar—to people when they are not in their usual, stable places, whether they’re traveling, in the hospital, or uprooted due to war or natural disaster. To do that successfully, we need to explore new ways to get our information out.

Our consumer health website, MedlinePlus, is fully responsive. As a result, it’s easy to use whether viewed on a full-sized monitor or a smartphone’s small screen. The full NLM website is responsive as well. But providing dynamic mobile content takes us only part of the way toward serving people on the move.

NLM’s Disaster Information Management Research Center (DIMRC), within our Specialized Information Services Division, travels that road even further. Our staff focus on maintaining access to health information at all phases of disasters and public health emergencies, circumstances which create their own unique challenges for staying connected and staying informed. Most recently, this impressive team set up websites to aid people in the path of Hurricane Matthew and to provide up-to-the minute information on the Corpus Christi water emergency.

On a larger scale, they have developed apps that serve the specific needs of first responders and emergency personnel, folks who are regularly on the move and encountering unexpected, shifting conditions. These apps—WISER, REMM, and CHEMM—help emergency personnel respond to hazardous materials (hazmat) incidents and chemical, biological, radiological, and nuclear events.

But Jacob Lawrence’s images depicting the terror and beauty of people on the move inspire me to do more. How can we build upon our services for emergency personnel? What else can we do to get health information to people on the move? How can we make sure those uprooted or displaced can readily access information and make sense of it despite the strains of being in unfamiliar locations or unstable circumstances?

3 thoughts on “Reaching Those on the Move”

Love this post. Getting information to people who are not in their usual settings for whatever reason is such a valuable community service that librarians of all types (including school librarians) can provide. Thank you for this thought provoking post.

Reaching out to public libraries and community agencies providing services to displaced persons–displaced by disaster but also displaced by economic uncertainties and aging issues–is vital! Thanks for recognizing that NLM has a role to play in these venues. Digital resources, AND training for staff/professionals in these agencies, is still needed.